Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service.[1] Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for both practitioners and researchers.[2] Most social media platforms have built-in data analytics tools, which enable companies to track the progress, success, and engagement of ad campaigns. Companies address a range of stakeholders through social media marketing, including current and potential customers, current and potential employees, journalists, bloggers, and the general public. On a strategic level, social media marketing includes the management of a marketing campaign, governance, setting the scope (e.g. more active or passive use) and the establishment of a firm's desired social media "culture" and "tone."
Determine who your main online competitors are. Research how they work, how they market and how big of a market share you believe they have. Sign up for e-newsletters, research their press releases and determine the strengths and weaknesses of each online competitor. You may even need to purchase something from them in order to understand how they complete their sales process.
Online marketing can also be crowded and competitive. Although the opportunities to provide goods and services in both local and far-reaching markets is empowering, the competition can be significant. Companies investing in online marketing may find visitors’ attention is difficult to capture due to the number of business also marketing their products and services online. Marketers must develop a balance of building a unique value proposition (UVP) and brand voice as they test and build marketing campaigns on various channels.
Social media itself is a catch-all term for sites that may provide radically different social actions. For instance, Twitter is a social site designed to let people share short messages or “updates” with others. Facebook, in contrast is a full-blown social networking site that allows for sharing updates, photos, joining events and a variety of other activities.
When I started out, I pitched SEO packages to local business owners that I met through networking, which is a good way to start building result-oriented business case studies that show the ROI (return on investment) that has been generated from your efforts. Once you have those and you can prove you consistently get results, you’ll be completely indispensable because nearly every online business succeeds or fails based on the quality of their digital marketing (and people who are really good at it are rare).

Although online marketing creates many opportunities for businesses to grow their presence via the internet and build their audiences, there are also inherent challenges with these methods of marketing. First, the marketing can become impersonal, due to the virtual nature of message and content delivery to a desired audience. Marketers must inform their strategy for online marketing with a strong understanding of their customer’s needs and preferences. Techniques like surveys, user testing, and in-person conversations can be used to understand the overall user experience.

Mobile devices have become increasingly popular, where 5.7 billion people are using them worldwide [13]. This has played a role in the way consumers interact with media and has many further implications for TV ratings, advertising, mobile commerce, and more. Mobile media consumption such as mobile audio streaming or mobile video are on the rise – In the United States, more than 100 million users are projected to access online video content via mobile device. Mobile video revenue consists of pay-per-view downloads, advertising and subscriptions. As of 2013, worldwide mobile phone Internet user penetration was 73.4%. In 2017, figures suggest that more than 90% of Internet users will access online content through their phones.[14]
Video Marketing: YouTube has become the second most popular search engine and a lot of users are turning to YouTube before they make a buying decision, to learn something or just to relax. There are several video marketing platforms, including Facebook Videos, Instagram, Vimeo to use to run a video marketing campaign. Companies find the most success with video by integrating it with SEO, content marketing, and social media marketing campaigns.